Olive, Again: A Novel Read Online Free PDF

after he told her.)
    “Oh, Olive, I’m so sorry to hear that.” Marlene turned her head, looking over the room in a glance, then said quietly, “Best not to tell anyone here, don’t you think?”
    “Fine,” Olive said.
    Marlene squeezed Olive’s hand and said, “Let me tend to these girls.” Marlene stepped into the center of the room, clapping her hands, and said, “Okay, shall we get started?”
    Marlene picked up a gift from the table and handed it to her daughter, who read the card and said, “Oh, this is from Ashley,” and everyone turned to look at the blond pregnant girl next to Olive. Ashley gave a little wave, her face glowing. Marlene’s daughter unwrapped the gift; she took the ribbons and stuck them onto a paper plate with scotch tape. Then she finally produced a little box, and in the box was a tiny sweater. “Oh, look at this!” she said.
    From the room came many sounds of appreciation. And then, to Olive’s dismay, the sweater was passed from person to person. When it reached her she said “Very nice” and handed it to Ashley, who said, “I’ve already seen it,” and people laughed, and Ashley handed it to the person on the other side of her, who said many things about the sweater, then turned to give it to the girl on her left. This all took a long time. One girl said, “You knit this yourself?” And Ashley said she had. Someone else said that her mother-in-law knit too, but nothing as nice as this sweater. Ashley seemed to stiffen and her eyes got big. “Oh, that’s nice,” she said.
    Finally it was time for the next gift, and Marlene walked one over to her daughter. The daughter looked at the card and said, “From Marie.” A young woman waved a hand at everyone from the far end of the room. Marlene’s daughter took her time attaching the ribbons from the gift onto the paper plate with tape, and then Olive understood that this would happen with each gift and in the end there would be a plate of ribbons. This confused Olive. She sat and waited, and then Marlene’s daughter held up a set of plastic baby bottles with little leaves painted on them. This did not go over as well, Olive noticed. “Won’t you be breastfeeding?” someone asked, and Marlene’s daughter said, “Well, I’ll try—” And then she said, gaily, “But I’m sure these will come in handy.”
    Marie said, “I just thought, you never know. So it’s best to have some bottles around even if you breastfeed.”
    “Of course,” someone said, and the bottles were passed around too. Olive thought they would go around faster, but it seemed that every person who touched the bottles had a story to tell about breastfeeding. Olive had certainly not breastfed Christopher—back then, no one did, except people who thought they were superior.
    A third gift was presented to Marlene’s daughter, and Olive distinctly felt distress. She could not imagine how long it would take this child to unwrap every goddamned gift on that table and put the ribbons so carefully on the goddamned paper plate, and then everyone had to wait —wait— while every gift was passed around. She thought she had never heard of such foolishness in her life.
    Into her hands was placed a yellow pair of booties; she stared at them, then handed them to Ashley, who said, “These are gorgeous.”
    And then Olive suddenly thought how she had not been happy even before Henry had his stroke. Why this clarity came to her at that point she did not know. Her knowledge of this unhappiness came to her at times, but usually when she was alone.
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    The truth is that Olive did not understand why age had brought with it a kind of hard-heartedness toward her husband. But it was something she had seemed unable to help, as though the stone wall that had rambled along between them during the course of their long marriage—a stone wall that separated them but also provided unexpected dips of moss-covered warm spots where sunshine would flicker between them in